the tax man cometh

Critter count and April fools.

/ Re-Farmer / 4 Comments

First the cuteness!

We had visitors yesterday afternoon. Three of them!

They were very curious about that cat, too! They hung around for a while before coming into the yard and checking out the compost heap.

This morning I counted either 28 or 29 yard cats. I’m not quite sure.

It’s not actually the black cats I loose track with. It’s the “printer babies”. All the white and greys!

Here, you can see the one cat’s messed up eye. That inner eyelid is making it harder to tell, but the pupil has a cloudy spot on one side that seems to be clearing up, while the other side is still looking brown.

On the topic of messed up eyes.

We’re going to have to change focus for when my tax return comes in. We still have to get the pill switch replaced on our septic tank, but we’ll have to wait on the pipe clearing. We need to get the Wolfman to a vet. After talking with the Cat Lady and showing her pictures of his eye that looks like it got scratched by another cat, we treated him with the last of our Metacam and monitored him. The rescue’s donations had run out, so even though Wolfman is on the list for adopting out, there’s nothing for vet care. Any donations they do get are quickly used up with spays and neuters.

I have the hardest time seeing the condition of the Wolfman’s eye, but he was opening it more often and blinking, so I thought it was getting better. The inner lids are still pretty swollen, but we can’t get more Metacam without a prescription, we can’t get a prescription without an exam, and we can’t get an exam done until we have funds. The girls seem to have better luck with seeing the eye, and this morning, they told me it was looking deflated.

*sigh*

Which means when we go bring him in, most likely the eye will need to be removed. I have no idea how much that will cost. I don’t think it’ll be as much as an amputation, of course; those both cost in the $1300 range. Still, it is a surgery, and that’s always expensive.

Damn.

Today, I got a call from the tax preparer. They just had one question for me, and then our files were done. I’ve already made the drive over to pay the bill, brought my husband’s form home for signing, and got it back right away. I didn’t even look to see what the final numbers were until I got home. Mine was exactly as I expected. I have no income, so I’m getting my caregiver tax credit, and that’s it. My husband qualifies for the disability tax credit, but his private disability and his CPP Disability combined bumps him into a different tax bracket. Without the disability tax credit, he’d be owing. Instead, he typically gets less than $20 back. That changed this year, though, and he’s actually getting more. Not much more, but enough to be helpful.

What isn’t helpful is that as of today, appropriately on April Fool’s Day, yet another Trudeau carbon tax has kicked in, which will make the cost of everything go up. I’ll let Quick Dick McDick explain it, as only he can. Language warning.

Not only is the idea that taxing “carbon” is somehow going to make the weather gooder laughable (keep in mind that we are carbon based life forms on a carbon based planet, so taxing “carbon” is taxing life itself – oh, and if you take into account Canada’s vast Boreal forests, we are actually CO2 negative), but we keep getting told that we will somehow get back more than we paid in.

Our Prime Dictator has openly admitted that he can’t do math, but you’d think even a trust fund baby born with a silver spoon in his mouth would know better. Which I’m sure he does, but the psychologist in my recognizes a narcissistic psychopath when I see one.

We’re told that we are supposed to be getting these quarterly rebates to make up for the new tax. My daughters get them, along with the GST rebate. Paltry sums, really, considering how expensive everything has become because of these taxes. My husband and I don’t get either. Apparently, he makes too much money on disability, which is insane. Since we’re a married couple filing our tax returns together, that means neither of us get any federal rebates. Sometimes our province will throw out a bone, but even then, I get it but my husband doesn’t. No doubt there are plenty of other families in our position that will keep seeing our costs increase, but never see any of these “getting back more than you pay” rebates. Then the powers that be will and their propagandists blame the eeeeeevil capitalists and the Conservatives for everything, right on script.

For those of you who have been following Karlyn Borysenko, who has been deep diving into the “woke left” for years now, you know that this isn’t really a politically left or right thing, but the result of decades of neo-Marxism.

I don’t want to go too far into this sort of thing on my blog, though, but this is something that affects all of us directly. Even us, in our little corner in the boonies, and the choices we need to make, so I feel I have to talk about it at least a little bit.

Looking at just the past few years, on top of the carbon taxes, they’re also punishing the use of nitrogen (which makes up almost 80% of our atmosphere) to grow food, they’ve declared that home gardeners are actually causing more “climate change” damage than large scale agriculture, and cow farts are heating up the globe, so they’re trying to get rid of cows in favour of ultra processed “plant based meat”, even though they know this stuff is worse for both our health and the environment, and so on.

What it comes down to is that people like us – people who just want to be as self sufficient as possible, and produce as much of our own food as we can – are going to have a much harder time of it, unless there are massive changes in the next few years. Having homeschooled our daughters, we’re already used to autocrats either trying to make what we were doing illegal or, failing that, making it so they control what, when and how we did it. During our final homeschooling years, we came very close to losing so much in the province we lived in at the time, as the NDP and the teacher’s union tried to push legislation that would have literally controlled what parents could talk to their kids about at the dinner table. They tried twice, actually. They learned from the first time, so the second time, they framed it as a way to “fight hate” and “homophobia”. A remarkable number of homeschoolers fell right in line, and they succeeded in pitting homeschoolers against each other. I don’t think people realize just what a disaster it would have been, had the proposed legislation passed, it was so broad and ambiguous. It’s just another step to see the same thing being tried to control our ability to grow our own food and live self sufficiently. I mean, it’s already illegal for a lot of people to grow food in their yards or keep a few chickens in their back yard. Hell, the mayor of Toronto is pushing to tax rain, for crying out loud.

Of course, we’re already seeing the effect of this new tax, and it just kicked in today. When I was in town to see the tax preparer, I saw gas prices had gone up another 4 cents per litre. Honestly, I expected it to jump higher than that.

Meanwhile, the price of groceries is going to keep going up, tradespeople like plumbers and our septic guy are going to have to increase their prices again, and the value of our dollar is going to keep going down due to this artificially created inflation.

Which makes what we are trying to do here, just to feed ourselves, all the more important.

At least while growing and producing our own food is still legal.

The Re-Farmer

Can this day be over, please?

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Good grief, what a day.

Right from the start, it was like everything was going wrong. Just little things, but so many of them!

Not everything was bad, though, so I’ll start with the cuteness.

Both water bowls were bone dry this morning, even though I topped the sun room one up last night.

I also chased a skunk out. The only reason I don’t think we had any racoons last night is because the water bowls were dry, but not dirty. The racoons always leave the water bowls so very dirty!

Of course, a dry water bowl is a warm spot, and the outside one was being taken advantage of by a cat I would really like to see more of. This is the one with one messed up eye, and he seemed to be warming his paws while I was putting the kibble out. He wasn’t sitting or lying in it, like I usually see other cats doing. Just standing in it. He didn’t run away while I put kibble in the tray under the water bowl house, either. When I came back with water, I watched him slowly, cautiously walk down the board we have as a ramp and move aside.

Meanwhile, I did a head count.

33! And I didn’t even see Sad Face anywhere! We’ve definitely got some strangers among us, but honestly, with some of the more feral cats that look so much alike, I really can’t tell which of them are new. Very few of them have distinctive features like one messed up eye.

After I finished with the water and went through the sun room to put away the container, I was very pleased to see One Eye in the sun room – that’s a first, that we’ve seen! He was moving slowly and cautiously, but he did not run off when I came in. Then, after I finished my rounds and came back to tie off the doors and go inside, I found him curled up on one of the cats beds, under the platform.

Before I started this, I did the evening feeding. He was still in the sun room and still moving about cautiously. I was actually able to reach out and put a hand on his back. He slunk away, but didn’t run away, which is very encouraging. The thermometer in the sun room was reading 18C/64F, so I do hope he comes back to enjoy the warmth, some cozy beds, food and water.

So that was one of the highlights of the day. I’ll take what I can get.

Among the things that went wrong today is, the toilet started acting up again. I was in the middle of doing several things at once, so the timing was frustrating! But I got it clear – I thought – cleaned up and went back to the other stuff I was doing.

One of those things was starting some pickled eggs for our Easter basket. I boiled more eggs than I was after, and only the ones that peeled the nicest got done. I ended up doing three different types; one with beet brine from our own pickled beets, one with turmeric and one with soy sauce. Those are now ready and sitting in the fridge until we put our basket together for blessing on Saturday. I won’t be taking it to church for blessing, since my mother gives me grief for having such a big basket. I should just have a tiny one, like hers. 🙄 So we will bless it ourselves.

Anyhow.

That got done little by little, with other things being chipped away at while waiting for the eggs to cool, then to cool down in cold water, etc. Finally, I was able to make myself some breakfast, which I ate in the cat free zone, aka: the living room.

Which is when my husband showed up to let me know that one of our daughters had been trying to plunge the toilet for the last 15 minutes.

I’m not sure what he expected me to do about it. He probably was just letting me know, but his timing really sucked! 😄

Once I was able to, I went into the basement to check on the septic pump. I know it’s supposed to take a long time for both tanks to fill, but between everyone’s water use, doing laundry, dishes and, of course, the phantom flush we still haven’t found the cause of, I know it’ll fill faster than typical. I turned it on only long enough to confirm I could here no water going through the pipe.

Meanwhile, my daughter used drain cleaner. We’ve got the “max gel” type that’s supposed to be able to handle the worst clogs, letting it sit for the maximum recommended time, and so on.

It didn’t work.

It will drain, eventually, but not enough for a proper flush.

Meanwhile, I still hadn’t been able to pick up more of that enzyme drain and pipe maintenance stuff that worked where the drain cleaner didn’t. The town where I knew they had some in stock is also where we went to get our taxes done last year, and we need to get those done so we can use my caregiver tax credit to pay for a plumber to clear the pipe that’s causing all these problems, and to get the pill switch replaced in the septic tank.

We just had one last thing to print out, from my husband’s medical insurance provider, which is not the same company that his disability payments come from. It used to be the same company, but his employer changed providers after he went on disability, so his disability payments still come from the original company, but his health care coverage is now with the new company.

So he logged on, found the information he needed, and tried to print it out.

The printer is in my “office” corner of my room, which is on wifi.

It didn’t work.

After trying several times, my husband finally saved it to pdf, put it on a thumb drive, and I tried to print it from my computer. Then we did it again, because the first file he saved was 22 pages! The correct file was only 4 pages.

Also, without health insurance, we would have paid over $8000 for my husband’s medications. That’s actually down from last year, since at least one of his meds, Ozempic, is now covered 100% by our province’s pharmacare program. His health insurance covers that one only for “reasonable dosages”. My husband’s dosage is so high, they won’t cover it. This is expensive stuff, even at lower doses. Gotta wonder about all those people taking it for weight loss!

But I digress.

So I open the file on my computer and try to print it out.

First, I kept getting “not responding”. Then it wouldn’t print, and just said “error.” What error? Who knows.

Now, I have printed things out since getting the new computer, and had no issue connecting to the printer at all. Now, suddenly, it just wouldn’t.

My older daughter came over to help out, since this printer is actually hers. We even tried to print direct from media, but for some reason, the option to print a pdf no longer exists! Just for photos. She kept trying with the printer, while I kept trying to figure things out in the settings on my computer.

Windows 11 really sucks.

Windows 11 control panel really sucks.

I tried troubleshooting it and, while it was going through that, a message popped up saying the troubleshooter has been moved and would soon not be available…

So… why was it even there as an option? And how are we supposed to troubleshoot something if we have to figure out how to find the new location for the troubleshooter it?

Not that it mattered. It “fixed” the problem, but in the control panel, it still just said “error” under the printer. Of course, we kept trying to print in between all these different things, and again, all it would do is tell us “error”.

Finally, I decided to try removing the printer, then adding it back.

Printer removed, select add device…

The computer couldn’t find it.

We went through so many different ways to try and add the printer back, but the computer just wouldn’t “see” it anywhere.

One of the options was “my computer is older. Help me find it” followed by a “next” button, but that didn’t work, either.

So we fussed with both the computer and the settings on the printers, and I kept trying again.

Then suddenly, it was there. The computer could “see” it!

I have no idea what I did that made the difference.

I didn’t care by then. I just selected it, and the computer installed and finally connected with the printer.

Then it was crunch time: would it actually print?

It did!

Sort of.

This time, I had a different problem. A problem I had the last time I tried to print something out.

The software printed on the page as if it were landscape, instead of portrait, squeezing everything to fit on one side.

It did this when I tried to print out a knit pattern for my daughter. No matter what I did to the settings, when it came time to print, it was turned the wrong way and squeezed to fit on side of the page.

After all this time fighting with it, I didn’t care anymore. The data could be read, and that was all I needed.

That done, I called the tax preparer and arranged to drop off our stuff, then finally headed out.

This town is about a half hour drive from us, so not too bad. The weather is nicer today, at least, though that wind is still brutal. At the tax place, I saw they had a drop box for all the people doing like we are; just leaving our stuff with them to work on later. We’ll get a call then they’re done. I’ll have to pick up the paperwork and bring it home for my husband to sign, but that’s the closest thing to a delay we’ll have.

Then it was off to the hardware store. I go here so rarely, I took advantage of it to just look around.

They have an excellent and well stocked canning section! 😁

When I got to the display I was looking for, I decided to get three bottles of the stuff. They had others for maintaining the tank itself, and even another brand of the drain and pipe maintenance stuff but, in the end, I stuck with what we already know works!

It’ll be so good when we can finally get a plumber to clear that pipe!

Then I kept wandering around the store. I did completely avoid the power tools section, though. Too many things there I want to buy! For me, being around power tools is a lot like going to a yarn store. I want to buy all the things! Power tools are a lot more expensive, though! 😄😂😄

It turns out it was a good thing I took my time. After I was all done and about to message my family to let them know I was about to head home, I found a message from one of my daughters. I’d used most of a flat of eggs for the pickled eggs, and she was letting me know she was about to finish the rest of them. So I made a quick stop at the grocery store for a dozen – I’ll be getting more at Costco tomorrow – and even remembered to grab some butter. I probably should have grabbed more; they house brand was on sale for $4.99, and not even Costco’s butter is that cheap. No surprise that they had a quantity limit! I decided to just get one, though.

When I got home and was pulling into the garage, I saw my younger daughter coming out. My husband had a prescription refill ordered for delivery, and they guy had just called to let us know he was close – something we requested, since our gate is usually closed and locked. So my daughter met him at the gate, and closed and locked it for me.

The girls kept fighting with the toilet while I was gone, and hadn’t had much luck. The honeypot was set up again! Since I got three bottles of the stuff, I want to use it in the drains for the tub, kitchen sink and laundry drain, too. For “slow drains”, the instructions say to use 8 oz, three days in a row. After that, daily maintenance is a couple of tablespoons, if I remember correctly.

Hopefully, it has done the job by now.

Excuse me while I go see if we are still stuck using the honeypot or not!

Well crud. Toni just puked a hairball on top of a sleeping Cheddar’s belly, on my bed. Who didn’t wake up until I cleaned the mess. At least he was on top of their big towel, and not directly on my bedding!

Ew.

I really want this day to be over!

The Re-Farmer

Taking us for fools

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I forgot. I should have filled the tank again on my way home yesterday.

Quick Dick explains it well.

The cost of everything is going to go up again.

This is going to hurt so many people.

Folks, if you haven’t started to grow and raise as much of your own food as you can (and this is a worldwide problem), get starting doing what you can, as best you can.

The Re-Farmer

Really? What now?

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But first, some adorableness. I had a parade following me this morning!

I had three others behind me as I headed back to the house. When I stopped to take this picture, Pointy Baby actually started running towards me! He is one of the few that lets me carry him while I walk. The others prefer to get underfoot on the path! It’s hard packed snow, but if my foot slides off while trying to not step on a fur ball, I sink a good 6 inches or more.

I so look forward to the snow being gone.

I so look forward to being done with other things, too.

Like car trouble.

Yesterday, I left early to go meet our beef supplier and pick up a BBQ freezer pack; three kinds of steak, burger patties, and two different types of farmer’s sausage.

It’s a good thing I left early, because I intended to use my mother’s car. I haven’t driven it in almost a week, and it was running just fine.

I didn’t notice anything wrong while on the gravel road, since everything shakes anyhow, but once I got on the highway, the whole car was still shuddering. When I got to highway speeds, I didn’t even get a mile before I pulled over. It felt like the wheels were about to fall off! I walked around and kicked the tires, but there wasn’t much I could do on the side of the road. I decided to go home and take the van.

The van hasn’t been driven for a couple of days, and it did NOT want to start! Once it did start, it ran fine, and started without problems after that.

*sigh*

After looking up the different possible causes for the shuddering in my mother’s car, I ruled out most of them. It didn’t have the right “symptoms”. I ended up emailing my brother about it, and we later talked on the phone. He suspects a U joint or the drive shaft.

Whatever it is, we can’t do anything about it right now. Our “unallocated funds” have already gone to replacing the tire on the van, and a few other things. Unless we go into the replacement vehicle fund, which I really don’t want to do!

I’ll talk to our mechanic later. If nothing else, I can get it towed to the garage, later in the month, and he can check it. We certainly won’t be driving it again until we have some idea of what’s going on. I also want to stick my phone under the car and try to get some pictures. I forgot to do that while doing my rounds this morning, but I’m going out again this afternoon, so I’ll do it later.

Speaking of other things funds went to, I ended up buying two different brands of tax software, and I am so incredibly frustrated. I got TurboTax again, after having problems with Ufile.

Our tax returns are simple. At least they should be. My husband has a T4A for his private insurance disability payments, and a T4A(P) for his CPP Disability. He qualifies for the Disability Tax Credit. I have zero income, and can get the Caregivers Tax Credit. Besides that, we can claim medical expenses. That’s it.

Well, with Ufile, I first had to find where the T4A and T4A(P) even was. Their category names didn’t match what was in them very well. It was very confusing, and when I did find the right form, it was missing lines. For the T4A, there was the line for what taxes are taken off, but none for the income. I went looking through the help section, where it to told me where I could input the income line from the T4A instead… and those lines didn’t come up anywhere, either! I could find nowhere to claim the Disability Tax Credit, nor my Caregivers Tax Credit.

So I got TurboTax and discovered it’s completely changed in format, but I did figure out most of it. Enough to “finish” our taxes – but while it apparently did claim my husband’s Disability Tax Credit, it wasn’t calculated into the return. For the past few years, he would come up as owing money until the credit was factored in, so he’d get the credit, minus what he would have owed. This time, he came up as getting a return… but no credit. As for mine, there was no option to apply for the Caregivers Tax Credit, so mine came to nothing at all. I went to the Canada Revenue Agency website and found the exact line numbers to apply for the credits, finally found them by going through the forms in the advanced sections – but it wouldn’t let me input anything, because our returns were already calculated, therefore it was finished. No, I had not filed them. I just saved them.

We’re looking at a difference of several thousand dollars in our favour, here.

After bashing my head against it, I finally threw in the towel.

Today, I’m going in to a tax preparer to get it done. If she can straighten this out, it’ll be well worth the fees! Especially since, according to the CRA website, there are two different amounts I can claim for under the Caregiver’s Tax Credit.

It shouldn’t be this difficult to do such basic tax returns.

I had other plans for today, but they will have to wait.

Meanwhile, I’m going to be driving around with the van again, when I really want to be using it as little as possible, all because something has suddenly gone wrong with my mother’s car!

*grumble*

The Re-Farmer

Moving forward

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Well, my mother’s car is now at the garage.

It won’t be worked on today. The mechanic was missing some information on file to be able to order a new tire. Which is fine. I’m just glad I had my daughter follow me in the van!

I talked to him about what happened, and was saying the tires were maybe 2 years old. He told me they couldn’t be that old, because he hasn’t owned the garage for 2 years yet! He’s the one who replaced all 4 tires for us. I think he had just taken over the garage at the time; I remember the signs on the building still had the previous owner’s name. They have definitely seen two winters, though. So they are, at most, a year and a half old.

One of the things that I told him was that I had not hit anything, and the tire had been fine, previously. He thought perhaps the extreme cold we had might have had an effect, but I don’t think so. I mentioned the guy changing the tire thought it might be defected. Either way, I asked him to do an inspection of the other tires, just in case! Which he will do.

That done, my daughter and I headed to a nearby small town where we could drop off the paperwork for her taxes. We tried to do her taxes last night, using TurboTax, but weren’t able to Netfile it. We couldn’t tell if the problem was with TurboTax or the CRA. I actually think it was both. We figured it would be easier to just take them in and pay someone to do them. Our first year back, we’d gone to someone in town that had done my parents’ taxes for many years. He screwed up badly; my husband ended up owing thousands of dollars, and he didn’t even file a return for me, because I have no income. The next year, we went to another company in another town. The person who did our taxes has a disability herself, so not only did she fix the previous year’s taxes, but told me I qualified for the caregiver tax benefit, and was able to fix my husband’s file to reflect his disability tax credit. He still ended up owing money from the previous year, but that’s just part of moving back to this province. We’ve ended up owing money every time we’ve moved back here.

So I knew this was someone that we could trust!

I called her this morning and explained our situation. Which is when I found out that TurboTax has been really buggy this year. She had tried to use it to file her own personal taxes from home, and ended up doing them in the office, because she couldn’t get it to work! Plus, there is the CRA issue. There was some sort of security issue (but not a security breach) and they suspended the secure login information for 800,000 people. I got the email notification about that, but was able to log on through my bank (which is how I usually log on), and was able to reset things on my own file. My daughter, however, kept getting error messages, instead. We couldn’t even print out her file to mail it, because the printouts had a watermark saying, “Duplicate copy: do not mail” on them. We couldn’t get the proper forms for mailing in, anywhere! In the end, it just wasn’t worth the hassle.

With the crazy doing on right now, the tax preparers just ask people to drop off their paperwork, and they’ll call for pick up when they are done, so that is what my daughter and I did, after dropping off my mother’s car. It’ll take longer for her to get her return, but at least it’ll be done. Her sister is going to try the software first, but if it messes up for her, we’ll do the same for hers. After talking to the tax preparer, I don’t expect it to work, to be honest. The software couldn’t handle a bare bones return, never mind a self-employment one.

We took the opportunity to run some errands, and even remembered to go to the post office.

There was one odd thing that happened when we were heading out. After my daughter backed the van out of the garage, I started to close the door…

… and something fell, hitting me on the way to the ground.

I found a large screw.

I quickly popped into the garage and closed the door the rest of the way

Above the door, there is a part of the garage door mechanism, held in place with a plate. That plate is now sticking out, behind held in place with only one screw at the top.

The garage door is larger than usual, and I was thinking it looked like it’s starting to sag in the middle. My guess is that that’s exactly what’s happening, and as it sags, every time we opened the door, it was hitting that piece, pulling it further and further out, every time, until the screw finally fell out. Of course, this can only be seen if we are inside the garage, while it’s empty, and the door is closed. Which pretty much only happens when we’re trying to repair things (or get rid of wasp nests).

So for now, the door is going to stay closed, so as not to damage things even more. We’ll need to drag out the A-frame ladder from by the building my parents’ stuff is stored in, and see if we can simply screw it back on again. It’s really windy right now, so while it’s a marvelous 12C/54F right now, I’m in no hurry to be carrying a ladder across the outer yard …as I watch the trees out my window suddenly start waving around even more, in an especially strong gust! This is a day when I’m going to be checking for broken branches, and seeing if any new trees have fallen down, as part of my rounds. I might even skip the evening rounds and save it for morning!

Not knowing how quickly we’ll be able to get it done, I decided to park the van in the inner yard, where it won’t be visible from the road, in case our vandal decides to take a walk past our place again. With my mom’s car in town, that means the garage is actually empty right now! This would be a good time to take a rake to the dirt floor and tidy up a bit. :-)

After the plate is fixed and we can open the door again, though. Otherwise the dust will be insane in there! :-D

Little by little, things will get done.

The Re-farmer

Obligatory fundraising promo! Ginger’s surgery is scheduled for 2 days from now. If you would like to help support him, you can buy him a coffee (donations can be as little as $1 Canadian), or share the Ko-fi page on your own blog, or social media.

Many thanks!

The fur is flying (and updates)

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For the past while, we haven’t been seeing deer come to the feeding station. The changing season and daylight hours seems to be the trigger for them coming by less often.

They are coming, though. Yesterday, I could see some hoof prints in the little bit of snow that had fallen during the night. By then, most of the feed was eaten, and I could see they’d walked around, but little sign in the snow that they ate anything.

This morning, there was no snow to leave tracks in, but I did find other signs of nightly visitors.

20190403.fur

There were little tufts of deer fur, all over the feeding station! Their winter fur much be coming out in patches right now. :-)

With heading to the hospital both morning and afternoon, I’ve been pulling into the yard after the morning visit. By the afternoon, things have warmed up, and I can really tell as I pull out of the yard.

20190403.mud.tracks

There was a time when this area was gravel. It’s been so long, there’s no sign of it anymore!

Getting a whole lot of gravel is just another thing on the to-do list for this place!

I was at the hospital in plenty of time for the morning visit with the doctor. My husband is doing so much better. Feet and lower legs still a bit puffy, but the shortness of breath is mostly gone. The reduction in fluids in his body has meant he’s able to do stuff for himself again, that he hadn’t been able to for a while. He was even able to sit in the comfy chair in his room! It’s a low chair, making it painful for him to get in and out of, but the back support and comfort made it worth the effort.

He’s still waiting on the tests for his heart in the city. Based on his bloodwork, the doctor has written him up for an ultrasound on his liver, but that may be (and likely is) completely unrelated to the edema. That will be in another, smaller city, not where he will be going for the heart tests, so that can be done on an outpatient basis; they’re not going to keep him in the hospital for it.

At one point, a woman had come in to let him know they’ve sent his file to a particular department, and someone was going to come talk to him about resources of this, that and the other thing. As she was talking, though, I brought up what I felt was being lost in the shuffle; the root cause of all of his problems. His back injury, and pain management problems. I’m glad I did bring it up, because she hadn’t know anything about it. She was just dealing with what they were dealing with while at the hospital; they’re focusing on congestive heart failure (I wonder what will happen when he goes into the city and the tests end up showing his heart is just fine, now that the edema is almost completely gone?) and the scare with his blood sugars. They’re talking about getting his sugars under control, increasing his mobility, and talking about weight loss. I brought up that, when he was first being diagnosed with his back injury, a spine specialist had said flat out, yeah, losing weight would probably help, but it’s not going to happen. The nature of his injury makes that almost impossible. Add in that one of the medications he’s on prevents weight loss, none of that is going to happen until that pain is under control. She clearly hadn’t known about the back injury, so we talked about his being on the waiting list for the pain clinic for more than a year already, and pain related issues, and she did even say, until the pain is managed, nothing else is going to get managed.

The down side of my husband working so hard to be a “good patient” is, things tend to get distracted away from the main problem, and all these peripheral issues are being focused on. Yes, they need to be treated, but as the symptoms they are, not separate, unrelated issues on their own.

On a related note, the doctor did the paperwork for the disability and caregiver tax credits, and I’m concerned we’ll have a bit of the same problem. The doctor can only answer for what he’s been working with, first hand, which even the form says is not necessarily the date of diagnosis. That’s fine. But where it talked about my husband’s condition, it only was about the most recent stuff from the past few days. There is nothing on the form that talks about the reason he’s on disability to begin with. I took the paperwork to the tax preparer, forgetting just how early in the day it still was. She wasn’t there yet, but I was able to leave the forms with the franchise owner. I asked for her to phone me, but I think I’ll just call her myself, before we head back to town this afternoon. I can find out how much we owe her, in the process.

Our budget is totally hooped for this month! We got our monthly shop in, and the bills are paid, so that’s the main thing. We’ll manage just fine. :-)

The Re-Farmer

It’s official… sort of

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As of today, it is now official.

We are a two vehicle household.

Sort of.

I was able to register my mother’s car in my name, but it’s still her car. This means that, if she needs help to get to an appointment or go grocery shopping, I can use her car, instead of her struggling to climb up into our van. I will make sure to use it once in a while, just because it’s not good for vehicles to sit around. Today, I plan to take it in for a car wash! :-D

But I am getting ahead of myself.

Continue reading →

Blue for You

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Alas, no pictures of deer today.  I did see one cautiously making its way towards the house, just a few minutes ago, but it saw me move in the window and dashed right off.

Sadness.

I did, however, manage to get a photo of a blue jay today.  For the past few weeks, even if I’ve been at the window, watching them for a while, the moment I get behind the camera, they all fly off!

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This morning, I managed to get just one decent picture, through the sun reflected on the window.

I love how they collect so many seeds in their beaks like that, before flying off.

It was a fairly quite day today.  We’re still in recovery mode and pretty low on energy.  My younger daughter and I made a run to the dump with our garbage and recycling, before heading to town to find a new handle for our garage door.  In the process, I remembered to pick up some chain and a carabiner to replace the heavy duty wire that’s been used to hold our main gate steady.  It has a sliding bar across the top to close it.  I’m not sure why it also needed the wire to hold it closed, and one of these days, I’ll remember to ask a sibling about it. :-D  The chain and carabiner will be much easier to handle than twisting and untwisting the wire every time.  It’ll look better, too!  Plus, we’ll have the ability to add a lock as well, if we ever need to.  Sadly, there have always been people who seek out solitary farms as targets for theft and vandalism.  At best, the RCMP are at least half an hour away, and that assumes they can even find any individual farm.  My oldest brother and I are already talking about adding a security camera on the garage, which would catch anyone coming in or out of the driveway, and another on the house itself.

Such is life, even in the sticks!

My daughter and I went to two different hardware stores, looking for a garage door handle.  Both stores had only one option available!  They were even the same brand and style.  On the plus side, the second place we went to had a much, much better price.

On the down side, while driving to town, I went into a coughing fit so bad, I had to pull over and get her to drive the rest of the way.

It’s so nice having another driver available!

This cold has really done a number on my chronic cough.  :-(

We had some other things happen that were polar opposites.  Such as my husband’s disability payment coming in early (they do that every now and then!) on the plus side, then getting a call from the tax preparer and finding out he’s now owing $3000 instead of the $1300 that came up when we tried using Turbotax at home.  I don’t understand how he can owe anything.  He’s supposed to be paid back taxes, retroactively, from two years ago!  And here we thought getting our taxes professionally done would mean it would be better, not worse.  On top of that, it’s going to cost us almost $70 in fees.

*sigh*

This has happened every time we’ve moved back to this province, no matter how late in the year we’ve returned.  We would be expecting a return, only to end up owing thousands.  This time, though, I am sure that has to be some kind of mistake.

Living here was supposed to save us money.  Instead, it’s been unexpected expenses, one right after the other!

Ah, well.  We’ll figure it out in good time.

The Re-Farmer

 

 

Hoop Jumping, discoveries and tech upgrades

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Since moving out here, there have been quite a few things that we’ve tried to do that needed unusual hoop jumping.  The most severe being our issues with transferring our identification, but another has been getting an internet connection.  Since we couldn’t afford to have a minimum 60ft tower installed, we had to go with satellite internet, and then ended up needing to get two accounts, because it was cheaper than going over our data limit.  Satellite internet has more speed limitations, too.  Our internet provider, however, recently gained access to another satellite and could offer higher upload and download speeds, with less interruptions, so we signed up for it.  Someone was scheduled to come in this afternoon to switch it for us.

Before that happened, we got to work on our daughters’ taxes.  In Canada, we have until April 30 to file.  Normally, we just do the TurboTax thing, but it had issues with my husband’s disability information.  So he and I have taken our tax information to the tax preparer in the next town.  This guy (it’s a family business) has done the taxes for my parents for as long as I can remember, and still does them for my mother.  Probably my brother who lives out here, too.  We’d gone to him when we lived out here years ago, so it was a bit funny to be going back to him again, after all these years.

Our daughters, however, should have been able to just do theirs as usual, right?

Wrong.

Turns out that they can’t file their taxes online, because of the new address.

They can’t log onto the Government of Canada website to change their address, because they’ve never needed to start accounts on the site before, and to start one, they needed information from last year’s taxes.  Which was lost when we lost my husband’s desktop computer after the move.

The alternative is to phone Canada Revenue.  The website says to change the address online, or call a 1-800#, providing a list of the information that would be needed.  One of my daughters called the number, got the automated system, went through the whole thing, only to have a recording tell her to go do it online.

Of course, the reason for phoning was because doing in online wasn’t an option.

Which meant they couldn’t file their taxes.

In the end, we gathered their tax stuff, drove into town and dropped it off with the same guy that’s doing mine and my husband’s.

The tax preparer’s wife took their stuff and got their information onto envelopes.  As we were chatting, she made an observation on how much my younger daughter resembles her grandfather (my husband’s dad).  Until then, I had forgotten that he’d done my in-laws’ taxes, too!

That done, we didn’t stay in town long.  Sadly, it seems one of my daughters has caught my cold.  I’m still sick as well, though I am getting better – the coughing fits are still a problem – so being out and about was pushing things.

Speaking of pushing things, before we headed out, I started to gather up some of the branches and twigs in the yard, now that the snow is gone.  There is a LOT of them.  In the process, I made a discovery.

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These little spruce trees were deliberately planted, right by the fence.

I don’t get it.

First off, why are two spruce trees planted in the middle of the fence line like that in the first place.  There are already quite a number of mature maples there, including a couple that will need to be pruned away from the power line to the house, as well as trimmed so that, once the leaves come in, they won’t be blocking our satellite signal.  You can see part of the row of maples on the other side of the fence.  The fence line used to be on the other side of those trees with a gate to the pump shack – the red building in the background.

Second, why so close together?  Spruces get quite large.  They should be planted anywhere from 8 – 15 feet apart.  We’re looking at less than 4 feet apart here.

And finally, why are they planted right at the fence?  As they get bigger, they will grow into and destroy the fence.

Yet there they are, with little support poles and tiny picket fences to protect them.  Initially, I’d thought maybe they seeded themselves, but the fact that they are protected like this shows that they were deliberately planted.

Why would someone deliberately plant trees in such a way that they will destroy the fence as they get bigger?

I don’t get it.

Meanwhile…

When we got back home, the internet guy was here and busily installing two new satellite dishes.

On the sunroom roof.

Oh, dear.  My old brother specifically said he didn’t want them installed on the roof.  Turns out, there was no choice.

Because of the trees.

It was the only place he could get a signal.

The old dishes were already down, and he took extra care to ensure there would be no leaking caused by the satellites.  It took him a couple of hours to finish up.  When he was done, he tested the speed at about 35mbps.  When I had the chance, I tested the wifi signal on my phone.  I got 40mbps for download speed, and 1.89mbps for upload speed.  The first is quite a lot faster than before – I think we were getting between 10-14mbps consistently.  The upload speed is almost doubled.

That should make live easier!

We also got cool looking new modems, with the black boxes replaced with white triangles. :-D

This is what we had before.

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That’s our original dish.  When we got the second account, the other dish was installed above it.

This is what we have now.

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They are aimed in a very different direction.  No wonder he couldn’t get a signal through the trees!  The other satellites were aimed through a gap between threes.  In the same location, these would have been aimed right into the trees.  From here, they are now aimed through the gap over the big gate into the yard; the one that can be driven through.  Mind you, there are still trees on either side that will need to be pruned, because they are overhanging the gate.  Plus one that’s shorter, but close enough that its branches get in the way when I have to make a wide turn into the yard.  Pruning is still in order.

I like trees.  A lot.  They are wonderful things to have, and can be very protective.  We intend to eventually plant more trees in the future.  Preferably food trees.

But they are also potential problems.  Many of the trees that have been planted in the yard seem to have been done without much thought given to what would happen, once they reached maturity.  From the Chinese Elm in front of the kitchen window, planted too close to the house with branches damaging the roof, to the pair of Chinese Elm on either side of the small gate, whose roots are now making the sidewalk blocks uneven.  Even the original maples on the north side of the house have been allowed to reach too close to the house itself; they should have been cut back many years ago, when they were smaller and it was safer to do so.

It’s going to be interesting, during our first summer living here, to get a good understanding of what all is planted around the yard, what we can keep, what needs to be gotten rid of, and possibly, what can be moved.  Those little spruce trees, at least, as small enough that they can be easily transplanted.

There is much to do here, that’s for sure!

The Re-Farmer